Our solar system's biggest crisis: Saturn's disappearing rings

Saturn is about to learn what professional athletes have known for a long time: Everybody judges you by how many rings you have.

The sixth planet from the sun could soon join Karl Malone, Barry Bonds and Jim Kelly as being famous, but having no rings (championship rings for humans). This is significant, for as long as humans have known Saturn existed, the most memorable thing has been its rings.

Saturn has four main groups of rings and three minor groups of rings. It's simpler to say Saturn has seven rings, which is the same as Elizabeth Taylor and one less than Mickey Rooney. (A joke for people 70 and older!)

Astronomers have bad news: Saturn's rings are disappearing, according to data from Voyager 1 and Voyager 2.

“The rings are being pulled into Saturn by gravity as a dusty rain of ice particles under the influence of Saturn’s magnetic field,” NASA said in a statement. NASA said the ring loss is happening at a “worst-case scenario” rate, which is the same thing that Elizabeth Taylor thought after marriage No. 3 or 4.

The bad news: It's happening fast. The good news? "Fast," in this case, means over the next 300 million years, so not so fast to us.

As everyone knows, Saturn was discovered by Galileo in 1610 and the rings were discovered 49 years later by Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens. OK, no one knows that, but still, it's true.

For centuries, school children have know Saturn by its rings, in the same way we know Robert Horry (seven NBA championships), Yogi Berra (10 World Series titles) and Charles Haley (five Super Bowl titles) by theirs. Rings were Saturn's thing, in the same way that each of the planets in our solar system are memorable (and yes, I'm including Pluto).

Here's how we all remember the planets, starting closest to the sun and moving out.

• Mercury was the lead singer of Queen.
• Venus is the name of a No. 1 song by Frankie Avalon that and a different No. 1 song by both The Shocking Blue and Bananarama.
• Earth is where the chalupa was invented.
• Mars is the home of little green men.
• Jupiter rhymes with stupider, which is helpful in writing limericks (but is poor grammar).
• Saturn has rings.
• "Uranus" is always worth a cheap laugh.
• Neptune is god of the sea.
• Pluto is a beloved cartoon character.

It's been that way for decades (at least since Bananarama reached No. 1 with its version of "Venus" in 1986), but now it may change, because Saturn won't be so special after all. In another 300 million years, Saturn will just be another planet in the solar system, looking for something to make it special.

And what will school children in the year 3000002019 do to remember Saturn?

They won't remember the rings. Saturn will be as forgettable as Charles Barkley, John Stockton, Barry Sanders, Dan Marino, Ernie Banks and Ken Griffey Jr. – all ringless.

Saturn is about to learn a lesson that Duke Ellington tried to teach via song: It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that ring.

The word "Uranus," on the other hand, will still be funny in the year 3000002019.

Some things are timeless.

Reach Brad Stanhope at bradstanhope@hotmail.com.